Outside in the school yard, it was growing hot. The weather was unusually warm for September, way up in the high seventies and the low eighties. Through the dusty glare, Neil glanced across at the fence where Toby had seen the man in the long white coat, but the scrubby grass was deserted. Neil could see why Mrs. Novato hadn’t believed anyone could have been standing there. The fields were wide open for hundreds of feet, and the first patch of cover was a sparse group of thorn bushes, at least three minutes’ hard running away.

He walked over to the fence and examined the ground. It was hard clay, too rough to show any footprints. He believed that Mrs. Novato hadn’t seen anybody, but he also believed that Toby was telling the truth. Tough little boys didn’t go fainting for no reason at all—and come to that, unimpressionable fathers didn’t go imagining old men’s spectral faces for no reason at all, either.

He went slowly back to his pickup truck, and sat behind the wheel for a while, thinking. He had a feeling that something wasn’t right—the same feeling you get on a warm day, when a storm’s beginning to build. He looked in his rearview mirror a couple of times, half-expecting to see the man in the white duster standing by the fence, but nothing appeared. After a few minutes, he turned the key in the ignition and drove off toward the bay, and another day’s work.

*

Although it was warm and clear in the valleys, there was a foggy chill out on Bodega Bay, and Neil wore his windbreaker while he finished off varnishing the White Dove’s afterdeck and cabin doors. Old Doughty wasn’t far off, smoking his pipe and watching the coast-guard cutters from under his peaked nautical cap, and over by the gift shop a party of Japanese tourists were proudly having their picture taken in front of Bodega Bay’s well-worn collection of whales’ jaws and sharks’ teeth.

As Neil put the last licks of varnish on the doors, Doughty got up off his perch and came strolling along the jetty. He paused by the White Dove’s berth, and stood watching Neil for a while, puffing and gurgling at his pipe.

“I reckon you’ve got yourself a few good hours’ work in that beaten-up tub,” he remarked. “I never saw anyone handle a craft so badly, the way that Mr. Collings knocked her about. I was damned surprised he never drowned himself.”

Neil shrugged. “It’s his funeral,” he said, noncommittally.